Officials with the Department of Environmental Quality say they will begin testing some 13-hundred local water supplies across the state for the presence of PFAs.
P-F-A’s are chemicals linked to thyroid disease and some cancers. They’ve been found at high concentrations around current and former military bases around Michigan, and officials say tests will determine if there are other water supplies that are at risk.
Susan Leeming is with the DEQ. She said the state is looking at water supplies close to current and former factories, airports, or military bases.
“We’re putting together all of those potential sources and then we look at the map and we’re also factoring into it where do we have public water supplies and how large is the community that they serve.”
Leeming said the DEQ hopes to have a completed list within the next few weeks.
“So the state is going to do this and we’ll be doing it on our dime and we’ll be doing it over the next year and a half, but that’s a lot of water supplies to get done in the next year and a half.”
Leeming said each sample will cost 500 dollars. She said the state will pay for and oversee the testing because it is easy for PFA’s from jackets, cosmetics, and even notebooks to contaminate water samples.
Jamie Hockemeyer is the Water Treatment Superintendent for the City of Mount Pleasant. He said water supplies like Mount Pleasant that pull from surface water will likely be tested sooner.
“It’s a lot easier for PFOS to go on the environment, on the surface, and then into the groundwater but the surface water is where it’s going to be contained. That’s where they’ve found it, in lake waters and such. So we may have a preferential sampling coming up, but we don’t have any credible threat at this time.’
Leeming said updated tests have not been conducted in Michigan since the federal EPA lowered the action level for PFA’s from 400 parts per trillion to 70 parts per trillion.